FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT WIKIPEDIA - PAGE 4

CHENNAI: There are many reasons for Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, to take interest in India. One of them is the need for balance in socio-geographic perspective in Wiki articles. "Being a global encyclopedia, we need an east-west balance in our content, quantitatively as well as perceptively," said Wikimedia foundation founder Jimmy Wales, who was in Chennai on Friday for the formal inauguration of Asia's first Wikipedia academy. The academy is an independent training center, to train interested participants in the methods and ethics of contributing to Wikipedia.

VANCOUVER: If you were left stunned by a black macaque's selfie last year that became a tug of war between Wikipedia and the photographer about who owned the selfie, this awesome "elphie" is going to floor you completely. Now trending on social media, the elephant selfie or "elphie" has taken users by storm. The "elphie" is courtesy Christian LeBlanc , a former student from University of British Columbia , who is now studying in Thailand, globalnews.ca reported. The "elphie" was taken on Koh Phangan Island in southeast Thailand.

BERLIN: Researchers have developed a new software that makes your web search easier by resolving the ambiguity of names within texts automatically. When reading the last name "Merkel", even people struggle to understand whether it refers to the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel or the famous soccer coach Max Merkel . It is a drawback for web search, too, researchers said. Up to now, the programmes can capture character strings like "Angela Merkel", but they do not pay attention to attributes like "German Chancellor" or "Germany's First Lady" at all. Even worse, after the word "Merkel" is entered, the search engines provide information about a lot of people with the same last name, researchers said.

CHENNAI: They are a group of 60-70 mostly young IT professionals called the knowledge foundation. Their common thread is the need to meet and discuss issues of significance outside their professional needs. Only this time, they are attempting to network with similar communities pan India and bring some of their activities, knowledge sharing, student outreach programmes, unconferences, under the Wikimedia banner. It is an attempt at establishing the India chapter of the Wikimedia foundation.

The Chelsea Flower Show is one of those traditional English summer thingies like the Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley on Thames et al, when the aristocracy and the glitterati turn out in full regalia sporting things like fascinators. This year, the proletariat is invading the uber-snobby show. Nope, we're not talking of the armies of unemployed Brits or Nigel Farage, we're talking of cutesy-wutesy garden gnomes. Garden gnomes, for most of us who haven't the foggiest, are basically these li'l statues of dwarves and gnomes, rather popular in rural - and even urban England.

LONDON: Modern-day kids are increasingly turning to the Internet to solve queries about simple chores rather than seeking advice from their experienced grandparents, a new UK survey has claimed. Older generations are being replaced by Google , Wikipedia and YouTube , with their grandchildren searching online to solve queries about basic chores, researchers found. Less than one in four grandparents said they have been asked for advice on basic domestic chores such as washing clothes, learning to cook a family recipe or sewing a button.

The other day, computer programmer Temutchin del Espiritu Santo Rojas Fernandez supported Venezuela's initiative to ban complex and foreign names. As he acknowledged from personal experience, "with a name this complicated, you lose time. " Perhaps he shortened his name to Temut Fernandez so as to save on real-time computing! In India, of course, there is the tradition of not just mentioning one's father but also the place of origin in the name. Which could pose a problem for anyone born in or around what Wikipedia tells us is the longest name for a railway station in India.

BANGALORE: In one of the most blatant cases of plagiarism to hit the elite IITs, Bio-technology Advances , a review journal, has retracted two papers from IIT-Kanpur after the researchers allegedly stole chunks of their manuscript from several sources, including journal articles and Wikipedia. The two retracted articles ? "Microbial production of dihydroxyacetone" and "Molecular imprinting in sol-gel matrix" ? are from researchers at IIT-Kanpur's department of biological sciences and bio-engineering.

The free culture movement is a broad movement originating on the Internet, encompassing such diverse phenomena as free (open source) software, Creative Commons licenses for music and other cultural objects, the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia, the Wikia communities and a growing culture of thoughtful collaboration and sharing which is transforming the way we think about the world. Although this culture is being primarily started and built on the Internet, I believe that the lessons we are learning in our online communities are applicable in building a rational global community in the real world.

Our simian cousins are very quick on the uptake — after all, there is not much difference in our DNAs. They don't take long to observe and then mimic most things we humans do, though what is often seen happening in parliament these days may suggest that copycat behaviour is mutual. Some humans have also discovered a lucrative career in dressing up as primates (langurs) to deal with the "monkey menace" in many urban centres in India. So, it was just a matter of time before monkeys decided to participate in the current human fad for taking "selfies" — a temptation that even heads of state have been known to succumb to publicly.